Foundation Capital Charles Moldow views on the financiers of innovationThis year has been one in which the venture capitalists and their business model have been called into question.The venture industry is heading into a perfect storm of problems, according to one writer. Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson says there's a venture capital math problem. A number of venture capitalists have chimed in as a chorus, saying it's broken. Many say there are too many venture capitalists, and that it's not good for America and that the industry is undergoing a substantial reduction in size.Charles Moldow, a venture capitalist at Foundation Capital, weighed in with his thoughts about the venture industry. He doesn't think it's broken, but he doesn't believe it'll change in five years. What will happen between now ... [http://vator.tv/n/ba3 read more]

• 11/14/09
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CEO Richard Rosenblatt on his new media's financing future, and his Godly goalsWhen you listen to Richard Rosenblatt, CEO and co-founder of Demand Media, explain his company's mission, it has a sort of Google-esque ring to it. Google's missions is simple: to organize the world's information. "We want to publish the world's content," said Richard, in a recent interview with me, at the Web 2.0 conference.If search is the primary online conduit to finding knowledge, then Demand wants to be the deliverer of that information and the beneficiary of all those clicks from billions of people seeking answers. So far, so good. Since launching in 2006, Demand has grown to publishing 4,000 pieces of bite-sized nuggets of daily content - pumped out with scientific precision - that now attracts 80 million unique ... [http://vator.tv/n/b6e read more]

• 10/29/09
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CEO Richard Rosenblatt is creating an assembly-line approach to content creationImagine an assembly line, of title creators, writers, fact-checkers, editors, etc. all lined up and working on one article or video. Each person touches a piece of content in a sequential manner using optimally-planned logistics.That's the methodology behind Demand Media's content creation. And, it's getting noticed.

• 10/29/09
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Investor in Mint, Aardvark, Disqus is still looking to place betsAydin Senkut, an early-Google employee-turned angel investor, is becoming known as one of the more prolific seed-to-early-stage investors in Silicon Valley, having invested in 40 companies since 2006. His portfolio consists of some well-known consumer Internet companies, such as Mint, which was recently sold to Intuit for $170 million, Aardvark, Disqus, Dogster, BrightRoll and Rapleaf. Aydin, who's taken a hiatus from investing since he's become a new father to son Henry, plans to continue investing this year. So far he's invested in 10 companies, including Practice Fusion, Crowdflower, Weatherbill, Outright, Foodzie and Bump Technologies. He plans on investing in a couple more startups before the year is up.So, what is he looking for and at what valuation?He's looking for small, ... [http://vator.tv/n/b39 read more]

• 10/23/09
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GP Charles Moldow explains why he invested in Pixazza, Project Fair Bid, Powerset, Xoopit and moreIn the past couple years, exits have been tough to come by. Yet Charles Moldow, General Partner, Foundation Capital, has managed to get a few executed. Charles has taken the lead on roughly 10 investments since joining Foundation in 2005. Four of them - Xoopit, Powerset, Weblistic and AdWhirl - were sold in the past couple years. Powerset was sold to Microsoft for roughly $100 million, Xoopit was sold to Yahoo for $20 million, Weblistic sold to Spot Runner for about $20 million as well, and AdWhirl was sold to AdMob for an undisclosed amount. In this interview, Charles talks about what Foundation, and, specifically, he invests in. Charles invests across the board - early to late stage. But he's ... [http://vator.tv/n/ab1 read more]

• 10/22/09
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Foundation Capital's Charles Moldow says buyers still have their claws inThere are a few positive signs that mergers and acquisitions are on the upswing. Intuit bought Mint for $170 million recently. Facebook bought FriendFeed for $50 million and Yahoo bought Xoopit for $20 million. But while buyers may be open to stock transactions, it'll be another six months before the M&A market rebounds to more healthy levels of activity, according to Charles Moldow, General Partner, Foundation Capital. And, the prices on acquisitions will depend largely on whether public market investors have any appetite for IPOs, Charles said. "The biggest challenge is that the buyers know that there aren’t a lot of alternatives," said Charles. Until the IPO market comes back, the lack of alternatives will keep a lid on activity ... [http://vator.tv/n/ae3 read more]

• 10/22/09
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Aaron Patzer tapped to run Intuit's entire personal finance division, targets foreign markets.In this segment, Aaron Patzer, CEO of Mint.com, shares the inside story of his company's acquisition and his plans for the next three years at the helm of Intuit's personal finance division. Mint.com is a personal finance tool with a beautiful user interface that saw astronomical growth from the time it launched at TC 50 in 2007. In two years, it has gained over 1 million users. On September 13, 2009, Mint announced its acquisition by Intuit for $170 million. VatorNews caught up with Patzer at the Vator.tv and The Funded's Juice Pitcher event last night, where Patzer gave a presentation on the cost side of building a business.

• 10/22/09
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Aloqa CEO on the four business lines of his mobile discovery serviceThumbtack recently won the people's choice award the Juice Pitcher event. It seems the audience liked Thumbtack because its goal is to bring local service providers together with consumers. Thumbtack isn't alone, many startups are trying to make money by bringing these two sides together. Aloqa, a mobile discovery service, is trying to get local service providers, like plumbers, to be matched with consumers. Aloqa is hoping to capture lead-generation dollars for that.

• 10/22/09
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CEO and co-founder Andy Dunn on building an online pants store to $6 mln in sales a yearIn this segment, Bambi Francisco interviewed Andy Dunn,. CEO of Bonobos, a two-year-old Manhattan-based designer and retailer of casual and dress trousers and polo shirts for men. BF: Are you expanding to female clothing at some point?

• 10/22/09
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Traffic iPhone app goes national and launches Twitter and Facebook sharingIf you ever wanted to share your “road rage” while in a traffic jam and broadcast it to all of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers, now you can. Aha Mobile, which makes a free iPhone app to let you know information around you while your driving – road congestion, nearest gas stations, coffee shop, etc. – just released on Wednesday a national version of its newly-launched service, plus a way to share experiences on the road with social network buddies by simply talking into the iPhone. “People are always leaving traffic reports [on their Twitter and Facebook accounts],” said Robert Acker, CEO of Aha Mobile, a young startup that received $3 million in financing from Venrock this past spring. ... [http://vator.tv/n/ae5 read more]

• 10/22/09
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The thin-client virtualization startup has captured 15% of the K-12 education market in two years.President Obama has earmarked billions of stimulus dollars for education technology. If the education system holds true to form, that money will be summarily devoured, leaving the bureaucracy hungry for seconds. The problem is that short-term windfalls can easily go to short-term programs. On the other hand, investing in long-term technology infrastructure can require ongoing IT support, which means a minor glitch turns a classroom into a digital graveyard. Virtualization startup NComputing thinks they have a solution. The two-year-old startup provides thin-client virtualization that enables up to 30 screens to run off a single computer, at a cost of $70 per station. The company has sold millions of stations to schools internationally, including 180,000 in Macedonia schools and 50,000 Andhra ... [http://vator.tv/n/a73 read more]

• 10/3/09
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CEO Sanjeev Agrawal on how Aloqa helps you discover who and what's around youAloqa is a mobile services company that recommends Facebook friends around you and things to do. It recently raised $1.5 million in venture funding from Wellington Partners and angel investors. This past July, Aloqa was awarded the people's choice award at VentureBeat's MobileBeat conference. Aloqa launched as an Android app, but has since expanded to Blackberries and as early as the end of this month, the company's services should be available on the iPhone. Essentially, the Aloqa service wants to help in the discovery process by recommending places - events, restaurants, movies, friends - to people while they are on the go. Their goal is to have a number of venues and vendors on their service, creating their own presence ... [http://vator.tv/n/a55 read more]

• 10/3/09
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User-generated directory on track (yet again) to double sales this yearThis is the second part of a three-segment interview with Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw, a fast-growing, user-generated business directory. (See interview No. 1)Jigsaw has been profitable for the past three quarters and its revenue has been doubling for the past four years. Despite the economic slowdown, Jim doesn't see sales slowing. He predicts 2009 will prove to be another healthy year in which revenue will double, again.What's the business model? Jigsaw has several revenue lines. Individuals pay a monthly fee of some $20 a month for access to names. But the big bucks come from corporations paying hundreds of thousands in annual licenses to access Jigsaw's entire database of 15 million records. Currently, Jigsaw has nearly 1,000 corporate customers. ... [http://vator.tv/n/a67 read more]

• 10/3/09
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